Spacially Separating Instruments

I want to be able to spacially arrange instruments in a bigger stereo field.
On many commercial recordings I listen to with headphones, instruments seem to be hovering over my head, or be playing way out there. How are these effects achieved? I know reverb and chorus can help with this.

I have a Behringer Modulizer and it allows you to set up a stereo image and another for 3D image, but the psychoacoustics involved sound unnatural, almost like I have a clogged ear on one side. How can I attain more natural spacial separation?

There are some phase tricks to create this type of imaging using delays or specially designed spatial enhancers. The ear is very sensetive to minute changes in phase, and it often takes less drastic settings to trick them than you'd think. I've never heard the Behringer piece. Desper and Roland used to make this type of unit, but I'm not sure if either one are still being made.

My preferred method for getting such a wide field on a particular instrument is to mic it in stereo to begin with. If all you have is a mono track to work with (and don't have any extra delays or spatial effects) you could try feeding the signal into a speaker in a room and stereo mic that.

The waves product is a protools plug in. I endorse Behringer gear & LOVE using the EDISON spatializer for excactly what you're talking about. Another simple trick, is on stereo tracks, run a delay (0 feedback) on 1 side with 0-15 ms delay. It will eff up your phase a lot, so be careful & check your material in mono. Another protools solution is the desper spatializer which is MUCH CHEAPER than the box), but you have to have a vintage farm to run it.

Originally posted by nm:I want to be able to spacially arrange instruments in a bigger stereo field.
On many commercial recordings I listen to with headphones, instruments seem to be hovering over my head, or be playing way out there. How are these effects achieved? I know reverb and chorus can help with this.

I have a Behringer Modulizer and it allows you to set up a stereo image and another for 3D image, but the psychoacoustics involved sound unnatural, almost like I have a clogged ear on one side. How can I attain more natural spacial separation?

Read Mixerman's post on what encompasses the spacial field we work within. A lot of it isn't something that you add later, but do during.

Also, consider a statement that George Massenburg said about how one element could be 60 dB down from another non-masking element and still be totally audible. This is somewhat discussed in Mixerman's "article".

Then read Mix's diatribe on frequencies and the use of EQ. It's not in my notes as to whether it's here or on Harvey's forum, but you can find it via a google.com search of RAP. It's worth the time to research and it goes hand in hand with your question.

Also, don't take what you hear in headphones and a commercially released mix as something you're going to accomplish listening to headphones while you're mixing. That's another thread all on it's own.

I was going to wait, but this is the second reference made to this article, so I'll put it up under a new header.

Mixerman

Hey, good stuff is good stuff. And it's all so inter-related that I'm compiling a 3 ring notebook of just your articles. And as opposed to others have suggested, I'm doing it on paper because I can hand it to clients/producer wannabes (meaning read it myself) as reference material. It's taken me my entire life learning to recognize good advice. I don't want to lose it now! <g>